Temptation
by Bainaku
Summary: Haruka's first time.


**Warning: **This story involves two women together. If you're not fond of such things, you might not like this. This short is almost completely innuendo and also contains mature images, so proceed with caution, ye wee innocent underage readers. I'm not responsible for searing out your retinas—though I would be honored if you'd grant me the privilege.

**Commentary: **A huge helping of gratitude goes out to **lostinhersong **for beta-reading this for me! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

This is set directly following the flashback events depicted in episode 106. If you don't know how Haruka and Michiru met, you might want to check that out before you read further.

This is **raw**. That's the only caution I'm going to afford you.

To all of you who read, review, message, question, critique, and encourage me: thank you so much. Please continue to do so.

As always, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the BSSM franchise. It belongs to the goddess Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

"_Ah, summer—what power you have to make us suffer and like it!"_  
—Russel Baker

**TEMPTATION**

Haruka's first time in bed with a woman is not quite what she expected.

It happens on a waning summer afternoon, when the air coming off the coast is heavy and high and the skyline shimmers in a crinkle-cream haze of heat. The cicadas whine. They burst into her apartment together, their steps staccatoed and desperate. Her partner clings to her, wants her, needs her: she whispers Haruka's name, a plea. Haruka's cheeks are crimson. Aquamarine hair falls over her arm, tickles her elbow, and she can hardly believe this is happening. She looks around her home and muses: _The kitchen counter? The table? The couch?_

But the bed is the only suitable place, really, and they go there.

Haruka lowers her partner and the springs of the mattress creak. The other woman arches up, hardly able to bear even this small parting between them. Sunlight slants in through the blinds and slices over the picture they make, strobing Haruka's fingers as she slides them beneath Michiru's clothes and begins to peel them away. Tan skin scrubs over alabaster; sweat beads, gathers in the well of Haruka's lifeline, drips down her thumb. She bites her lip and Michiru cries out.

She stops. She has no idea what to do with her hands.

But Michiru does, and she stretches up, shivering, to help Haruka flare her fingers. She guides the woman's broader palms to quivering flesh. The breath leaves both of them in a shared rush and they lock eyes, storm to sea, and Michiru whispers, "Please."

Denying her is impossible. Haruka's heartbeat hums in her temples, a snare-steady throb; her mouth is dry. Reaching over for the thing waiting in the drawer of the bedside table, she holds it up and shows it to Michiru. She has before only used it for herself. "This?" she asks.

Michiru surveys her choice, almost panting. "That," she agrees. She hesitates. Haruka watches apprehension and indecision war in the marine gaze, but at last Michiru tugs the taller woman's fingers to the scraggling scarf of her uniform. "Finish this first," she insists.

Haruka does. She draws the scarf free. The collar of the uniform falls open, displaying droplets of perspiration on pale silken skin. Haruka brushes them away with her thumb—that, at least, she knows to do out of instinct alone—and Michiru smiles, anxious, encouraging. Hooking her nails in the fabric of the blouse, Haruka pulls it apart: at the waist to begin. She moves on next to the shoulders, sliding them free; she unrolls and unbuttons the sleeves. The skirt comes away last, and Haruka discovers that her partner has a looping constellation of freckles smattered beneath the ridge of a hip. Michiru's nails bite into her wrist—but never do they stop her, and soon the only thing between them is a beige bra and a bubble of unease.

She pauses again, hesitant.

"Haruka," Michiru beseeches. The taller woman looks up and nearly drowns in the ocean of her eyes.

"Michiru—"

"I can't do this by myself," Michiru tells her. Shame and longing color her voice. She laces their fingers; beneath Haruka, her body trembles.

The bubble pops and heat blooms in Haruka's chest, and she husks, "You won't have to—don't worry," and she shifts her free hand, unhooking and tossing away the bra. Her fingertips graze flesh. Michiru's wordless sob of aching gratitude ripples through the room, fills the fractures of Haruka's cracked heart. The springs of the mattress sigh and the blonde shifts forward, and their knees knock, and their bellies brush, and Michiru holds fast to her and says,

"I'm ready."

She sounds afraid—she _is _afraid. Haruka's shuddering soul echoes the sentiment. Leaning back, she cups the smaller soldier's face in hands that quiver and demands, hoarse, "Are you sure?" Her tongue darts out, wets her lips. "We—we can stop this." But she doesn't want to, no, not now. Thorns of possession have pierced her perception already, tainted it the turquoise of the tresses tracing her pillow. She feels the flit of Michiru's pulse under the hinge of her thumb; she maps it in an idle index-finger caress. She thinks, selfish and shameful and proud altogether, _I'll take care of it_.

Michiru points to the thing on the bedside table she before denied. Haruka picks it up, rolls it in her hand. To her partner she suggests, gentle, "On your side."

"I want to see you," Michiru protests.

"Not this time," Haruka refuses. "It's… it's better. Easier. That way."

Michiru looks up at her, wide-eyed, and exhales weakly, "You know?"

Soft, an admission she has allowed no one else but the woman beneath her, "I know."

Michiru studies her. She squints against the sunlight slanting in through the blinds. Under Haruka's palm she finally shifts over onto a hip, showing the other soldier the bare white width of her spine and the shadows in its shallow well. She watches Haruka from the corner of an eye for a moment, evaluative—then closes it. Trust beads in her shell-sliver lashes and she manages, "All right."

Haruka's fingers tighten over the thing. She braces her free hand against Michiru's thigh; her touch makes dimples in the soft skin there. "Mm?" she queries. They both know it is the last time she will ask.

"Yes, Haruka."

Haruka lowers her hand. The thing touches Michiru, pierces her, penetrates her. She sobs and thrusts her face into the pillow to muffle the sound, and between Haruka and Michiru there is simultaneously a tearing and a joining.

Blood seeps into the sheets.

At the end of it, Haruka eases back a bit and murmurs, "It's done."

The disinfectant pad on the end of the tweezers is a sodden dark sphere and the last laceration has been flushed. The bandages on Michiru's wounds are sound, the stitches beneath them firm. The smaller soldier cries still. Caught in the crux of her quiet weeping, Haruka comes close too.

Michiru says nothing. Her shoulders heave. She draws her knees up to her chest, ginger. Guilty, cast away, Haruka finally stands on numbed feet and makes to leave.

But then: "Stay with me."

She turns. Michiru is looking over her shoulder, her face a ruin of seasalt-shimmer shame and pleading. Her lips form the word, "Please." And finally, "Haruka."

Haruka slips back into bed with her. They do not twine hands, or reach for each other, but they are together for the first time even so, complete in their conflict and the sliding sear of summer's end.


End file.
